Brown also seems to have been just a very nice man. In one of his few surviving letters, he tells his wife how, separated from her by business, he passed the day in imaginary conversation with her, “which has every charm except your dear company, which will ever be the sincere and the principal delight, my dear Biddy, of your affectionate husband.” That’s not bad for someone who was barely schooled. They were certainly not the words of a peasant.
